{"id":"01KF7FPTFG6DFYABZ0C6C2J72R","cid":"bafkreifg2au26exv7pc7qkfqokrmnymthr65qawfa7amqhtckdsd2m72ji","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":18726,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:21.448Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":18649,"text":"upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her\r\norphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after\r\nyears; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked\r\ndown some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely\r\nhung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than\r\nuseless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him\r\neasier to harvest.\r\n\r\nWhy tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew\r\nmore and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the\r\nlast; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes,\r\nglitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows\r\nfell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother\r\ndived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed\r\nher thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a\r\nvagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to\r\nflaxen curls!\r\n\r\nDeath seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death\r\nis only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but\r\nthe first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the\r\nWild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of\r\nsuch men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions\r\nagainst suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean\r\nalluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking\r\nterrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of\r\ninfinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither,\r\nbroken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate\r\ndeath; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come\r\nhither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and\r\nabhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put\r\nup _thy_ gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till\r\nwe marry thee!”\r\n\r\nHearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by\r\nfall of eve, the blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth\r\nwent a-whaling.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 113. The Forge.\r\n\r\nWith matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about\r\nmid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter\r\nplaced upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the\r\ncoals, and with the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came\r\nalong, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While\r\nyet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last,\r\nPerth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the\r\nanvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights,\r\nsome of which flew close to Ahab.\r\n\r\n“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always flying\r\nin thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;—look here, they\r\nburn; but thou—thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”\r\n\r\n“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting\r\nfor a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily can’st\r\nthou scorch a scar.”\r\n\r\n“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful\r\nto me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others\r\nthat is not mad. Thou should’st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou\r\nnot go mad? How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens\r\nyet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?—What wert thou making\r\nthere?”\r\n\r\n“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”\r\n\r\n“And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard\r\nusage as it had?”\r\n\r\n“I think so, sir.”\r\n\r\n“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never\r\nmind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPP20229JJHH4PXDZ18ZK","peer_label":"Chapter 112","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPP20229JJHH4PXDZ18ZK","peer_label":"Chapter 112","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KESYJX0Z6XE0HWTS5N3SDG0B","peer_label":"The Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTF19WTSQM730KYK6ABR","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTDKHM3C1FJDNDYK5EP7","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:21.982Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:28.828Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}